Songs from Sardinia

A Documentary Film Screening
followed by a concert by Tenores de Aterúe
and Q and A with the singersNovember 13, 2018 @ 7PM | Spencer Studio Art Building, room 212

Working from a YouTube video, four New England singers reverse-engineer an obscure Sardinian tradition of quartet throat-singing. When a video of their first performance goes viral in Sardinia, they set off on a quest to find the true heart of this deeply intimate, molecule-rearranging music.

Tenores de Aterúe (Avery Book, Gideon Crevoshay, Carl Linich, and Doug Paisley) formed in 2007 to study and perform traditional songs from the Mediterranean island of Sardinia. The entrancing guttural sounds, overtones, and rhythmic precision of the traditional singing form called cantu a tenore led UNESCO to declare it a “Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity” (2005.) The Tenores are the only ensemble outside of Sardinia that is dedicated to singing cantu a tenore. Over the years, the Tenores have been in-demand performers on stages throughout the US, Canada, and Sardinia. They have appeared on VPR, New York City’s WFMU, BBC Radio, and on Sardinia’s Radio Barbagia and TCS Television. Aterúe, the Singers from Elsewhere, a film about the group’s encounters with the living world of cantu a tenore, will be released in 2019.